Transcript

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>> The US and it's allies allowed Iran to sidestep key restrictions on its nuclear program as they rushed to meet deadlines for last year's deal, Reuters has learned, keeping President Obama's standout foreign accomplishment on track at a critical moment. Foreign policy reporter, Jonathan Landay, has the exclusive.>> I was able to review a report coming out this week that says Iran was given exemptions by the United States and its negotiating partners from certain restrictions in the Iran nuclear deal.

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In particular, one of these exemptions gave it a pass on the amount of low enriched uranium it's allowed to have its facilities. How much it actually has in the facilities is not apparent which is why there is concern over this issue. The United States and its negotiating partners known as P5+1 secretly agreed to give Iran these exemptions so that Iran could meet the deadline for the beginning of the lifting of financial sanctions that were crushing its economy.

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Meeting the deadline to begin the lifting of sanctions was incredibly crucial to President Hassan Rouhani of Iran, who basically made his election platform the lifting of sanctions. So there appears to have been a political aspect to the granting of these secret waivers.>> And we took off the sanctions and we made this horrible deal.

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>> With the Iran deal a hot issue on the campaign trail, the revelation could pose problems for President Obama and Hillary Clinton.>> The problem is that they were done in secret and the fact is that the Obama administration had repeatedly said that it had made no quote, unquote secret side deals with the Iranians.

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The critics are absolutely certain to see these exemptions as a secret side deal.>> The White House pushing back saying they never allowed Iran to skirt any restrictions and assuring Reuters Iran did not have enough material to construct a nuclear weapon. Ever since Obama struck the deal last year, Republicans including presidential nominee Donald Trump, had been up and arms saying it doesn't prevent Iran from creating a nuclear weapon.